This invention relates generally to recycling processes and more particularly to an improved process for recycling plastic waste materials in which paper and other accompanying contaminant waste materials may be recycled together with the plastic waste materials. Plastic waste materials consume nearly thirty percent of the present landfill volume around the world. Many organizations have invested large amounts of money to develop various recycling processes that have not proven to be cost effective. These conventional plastics recycling efforts have typically involved very labor intensive, time consuming sorting of the plastic waste materials according to plastic species. In some cases, recycling has involved remixing of various plastic species to produce a particular product. All known processes for recycling plastic materials require heat molding, and they tolerate only very small amounts of contaminant materials. All of these prior art plastics recycling processes are more expensive than virgin material manufacturing techniques.
It is therefore a principal object of the present invention to provide an economical solvent based plastics recycling process that facilitates post consumer waste plastics recycling involving little or no sorting and that produces a wood or masonry substitute as an end product.
This and other objects are accomplished in accordance with the preferred embodiment of the present invention by providing a process that includes the steps separating polystyrene waste materials from other plastic waste materials, shredding the non-polystyrene plastic waste materials until a substance having a pulp-like consistency is obtained, spraying the separated polystyrene waste materials with a solvent in a solvent mix tank to reduce them to an epoxy type sludge, slowly adding the shredded non-polystyrene waste materials and mixing them with the epoxy type sludge, adding any desired shredded waste materials such as paper, cloth, rubber, crushed concrete, and metals, to obtain a liquid mass of reduced waste materials, removing the liquid mass of reduced waste materials from the solvent mix tank, removing the excess solvent from the liquid mass of reduced waste materials, molding or otherwise forming the resulting liquid mass of reduced waste materials to impart a desired form and texture, and curing or hardening the formed liquid mass of reduced waste materials to obtain a hardened end product.